11/28/2010

First, catch your hare …

What are hares? Once familiar to the point of ubiquity, mythically resonant to the point of legendry and eaten to the point of … well, eaten, these beasts are now scarcely recognised. Easter bunny? It was really a hare, you know.

Respected and feared for their solitary nature and - I suspect - their strange, staring eyes, hares across the world are immortalised in fairytale as madmen, tricksters and messengers of the moon. They are noble, weird, and a rare winter treat.

While superficially similar on the outside, hares yield an utterly different meat to their inferior wabbit relations. Where bunnies are porky pink, the Dulux paint chart would match hares to "oxblood red" - a purple burgundy deeper even than red deer. And the flavour? Like venison yet richer, more complex, dark and profound. Wonderful.

I decided to honour the season of the beast with ragù di lepre, the classic Italian pasta sauce. First, buy your hare … Having purchased the beast at lunchtime, I was obliged to stuff it in the staff fridge, listening for the squawk as a snooping colleague recoiled when a carcass the size and dimensions of a flayed terrier flopped onto their ballet pumps (one lives in hope …).

In many hare recipes the blood plays a vital role - not only is it a dark meat that relies on blood for much of its flavour, but it turns out that this thing bleeds like a haemophiliac. Just unwrapping turned my work surface into a scene from the Sopranos – thick, disturbingly human blood smeared violently across the chopping board, and splattered down the side of the pan.

It is as I assemble the pieces that I realise I have no recipe. Or rather, that this might be a problem. Resolving to resolve this on the morrow, I toss the butchered hunks - a leg here, a rib cavity there - into a big pan, with five or six onion quarters, some peeled carrots, celery and half a bouteille of red. Overnight.

Next day brought everything together. The gamey hare cries out for rich, aromatic, profound and medieval flavours. Extra virgin in a big pan, then finely chop the vegetables and sautee, then add the hare, plus: a sliver of orange peel stuck with 2 cloves, freshly grated nutmeg, cinnamon, a sprinkle of mace, a coupla bay leaves, a length of rosemary, white pepper, salt. Then a load of chicken stock (because I'd poached a chicken the day before …).

Leave on a low heat with the lid on for - I dunno - 4 hours?

Towards the end, I added half a tin of chopped tomatoes - mainly for texture - and grated a square or two of dark chocolate into the mix, plus a little brown sugar.

The meat came off the bone like a dream, so I shredded it thoroughly and picked out the bones. This is both important and impossible. If you've cooked the meat long enough, it will have fallen to pieces, and your sauce will be full of stray vertebrae. You will not get all of these out - but you should try.

As the ragù was a little solid, before serving I added butter and extra virgin olive oil - this will ensure it coats the pasta well - without viscosity, it won't cling. Unctuous is what we are looking for here, folks. Unctuous.

Being a thick, rich meat sauce, this should be served with pappardelle - this also goes for ragùs like venison or wild boar. At the last minute I tossed it with al dente pappardelle and served with grated pecorino and toasted pine nuts.